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Naruse was a studio-based director, a company man renowned for bringing films in on budget and on time. During his long career, he directed movies in different styles of melodrama while displaying a remarkable continuity of tone. His films were based on a variety of Japanese literary sources and original scripts; almost all of them were set in contemporary Japan. Many were "women's films." They had female protagonists, and they depicted women's passions, disappointments, routines, and living conditions. While neither Naruse or his audiences identified themselves as "feminist," his films repeatedly foreground, if not challenge, the rigid gender norms of Japanese society. Given the complex historical and critical issues surrounding Naruse's cinema, a comprehensive study of the director demands an innovative and interdisciplinary approach. Russell draws on the critical reception of Naruse in Japan in addition to the cultural theories of Harry Harootunian, Miriam Hansen, and Walter Benjamin. She shows that Naruse's movies were key texts of Japanese modernity, both in the ways that they portrayed the changing roles of Japanese women in the public sphere and in their depiction of an urban, industrialized, mass-media-saturated society.
Author: Catherine Russell
ISBN-10: 0822343126
ISBN-13: 9780822343127
Publisher: Duke University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2008
Pages: 488
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.85lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 1.40d
Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2009
Catherine Russell is Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University. She is the author of Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video, also published by Duke University Press, and Narrative Mortality: Death, Closure, and New Wave Cinemas.
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